Seita, Makoto

As I learn interdisciplinary studies and how they work, I would like to study topics where new discoveries are made from both informatics and biological perspectives

Q What was your motivation for joining the program, and what about the program appeals to you?

The reason why I applied to this program was because of my interest in interdisciplinary studies. My current focus of research is autophagy, where the fusion of muitiple disciplines are thought to be very effective; there are multiple overarching questions in autophagy (such as how the autophagosome only bends in one direction) requires knowledge from physics and chemistry so that we can understand the physical and chemical properties of lipid molecules. I believe that learning disciplines outside of biology would allow my research to be more diverse and would produce more new, inspirational ideas.

Q What is your expertise and who do you want to develop it with the program?

My expertise is the molecular biology which I have been studying since the beginning of the undergraduate, and I would like to expand my knowledge on biology with the knowledge outside of my field. I would like to talk to people who has physical, engineering, and informatics background to understand biology from a different perspective and I would like to think of a topics of study (in molecular biology) which can produce meaningful discoveries in all of the fields I have mentioned.

Q What are your future dreams and goals?

My goal in future is to be a researcher. As a future researcher, I would like to think of my study not solely from the biological perspective but also from other disciplines so that I can be more balanced, well rounded researcher who has wider range of knowledge and would never feel trapped in one area without any progress.